5 Embarrassing Subject Line Mistakes to Avoid

Subject lines are incredibly powerful. That’s because they are one of the first things that subscribers look at when they receive an email and are trying to decide whether to open it. The subject line is second only to your sender name in importance, as you’d expect with a permission-based channel like email.

Despite all of the (mostly justified) power attributed to subject lines, this line of text is a hotbed of mistakes that can distract and confuse subscribers and be embarrassing for the brand. We discuss five such mistakes in this slidedeck and share numerous real-world examples.

These subject line mistakes made me cringe! Check out these real-world examples from @litmusapp >> http://bit.ly/2oH9S2q

Improve Your Email Subject Lines

Litmus’ Subject Line Checker helps you improve the performance of your emails by ensuring your subject line and preview text are optimized. One of the many features of Litmus Builder, Subject Line Checker lets you view real-time previews your envelope content in 17+ emails apps and webmail clients before sending so you can avoid potential problems.

SLIDESHARE TRANSCRIPT5 EMBARRASSING SUBJECT LINE MISTAKES TO AVOID

The subject line is a make it or break it moment for marketers. You have only a few seconds to earn a subscriber’s attention. Don’t squander the moment by making a distracting error.

If you don’t have a good QA process in place, you could end up accidentally making one of these 5 embarrassing subject line mistakes…

Not overwriting placeholder text

Typographical errors

Broken personalization

Improperly inputted or unsupported emojis and special characters

Awkward truncation

Let’s look at each of these mistakes, along with some real-life examples, and then talk about some recommendations on how to avoid them.

1. Not overwriting placeholder text

If you don’t have a good QA process set up, placeholder text can accidentally sneak through and get sent to your subscribers. For example…

2. Typographical Errors

Typos are distracting and sometimes quite embarrassing. An unnecessary space (or a lack of spaces) can also cause problems. For example…

3. Broken Personalization

When the personalization in your subject line breaks, it makes your email seem artificial and impersonal—the exact opposite of what you were going for. For example…

4. Improperly inputted or unsupported emojis and special characters

Emojis and special characters aren’t supported in every email client, and can look different even when they are supported. Also, if they’re added incorrectly, you can end up with code in your subject line. For example…

5. The awkward truncation of a subject line

Having the text of your subject line get cut off in the inbox can appear to change your message in ways that are distracting, confusing, or even super embarrassing. For example…

If any of those examples made you cringe, consider adding the following to your pre-send checklist…

Double-check the spelling, grammar, and content of your subject line.

Ensure your personalization is working and has default values set.

Preview your subject lines in all the popular email clients.

The Litmus Email Creative Platform can make this quicker and easier. Our Subject Line Checker provides:

Tags:

Chad S. White is the Research Director at Litmus and the author of “Email Marketing Rules.” He has written thousands of posts and articles about email marketing trends and best practices, and his research and commentary have appeared in more than 100 publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today.